Severed #4

Part Four, "Stealing Home"
written by Scott Snyder and Scott Tuft
pencils and colors by Attila Futaki
inks by Bill Nelson

The monster now going by the name of Alan Fisher gets some kind of thrill out telling the horrible truth about himself and not being believed.  Still suspicious of the phonograph salesman with little knowledge of phonographs, Sam contacts the office number on his business card and arranges a meeting with Fisher's boss.  Unfortunately for her, Fisher is very savvy and lures her to a run-down diner far out of town before ambushing her and, by all indications, killing her and eating her.

Severed is a horror fable about vulnerability and the deep fear of not knowing whom to trust.  Jack Brakeman believes whom he wants to believe.  He wants to believe in his absent father and is willing to make excuses for him despite not knowing anything really about him.  He wants to believe that the old music man who gave them food and coddles his young ego is a helpful and honest man.  He mistrusts Sam, despite her consistently proving her trustworthiness, because she questions his credulous faith in strangers.  Unlike Jack, whose life with Katherine—whom he's treating with unacceptable disrespect—has sheltered him from real danger, Sam has experienced betrayal again and again, from family and strangers, and she has the bullet in her scalp to prove it.  After a brief falling out, Sam and Jack make up, and make out.  As a show of trust, he gives her his wallet, and when she leaves the next day with his fiddle to get it restrung while she's meeting Fisher's boss, he shows no doubt in her.  But when Sam fails to return with his things, he suspects the worst and takes her for a thief rather than worrying for her well-being.  When the man known as Fisher returns his fiddle with a flimsy story, Jack once again takes him at his word.

Jack is, it seems, more alone than ever and easily lost in the underground, friendless and without his mother even knowing where he is or where he's headed.  He's without his wallet and his independence, making him even more reliant on the child-eater Fisher to get to Mississippi.  And his instincts about people are as poor and unrefined as they come.